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CHAPTER 2

The 7-Step Model: Core Elements of a Successful Environmental Training Program

Remember, in the end, nobody wins unless everyone wins.

Bruce Springsteen

Effective environmental management programs comprise a number of elements that support each other. Training is only one of them.

This section groups the elements listed in Chapter 1 into seven steps. The steps aren’t necessarily sequential, but they do need to be mutually reinforcing, as Figure 3 shows.

The examples given for each step are, again, drawn from Auckland’s erosion and sediment control program to illustrate the general principles of the seven steps, but the steps apply to any environmental training program.

In Chapter 3, I’ll give examples of other environmental programs to give you more food for thought in the worksheet and mindmap pages that follow, including:

a US-based erosion and sediment control training program

mandatory environmental management plans for utility service providers and industries

in-house training for a large, multi-site manufacturer

voluntary community riparian restoration and enhancement programs

dairy farmer and supermarket supply chain programs

environmental restoration by first nations peoples

trade union support for ‘green’ workplace representatives.

As you go through the Action Sheets, ask yourself what issues your organization could solve using the 7-step model.

Figure 3 contains the key elements of the generic management cycle: research, policy, implementation and evaluation (or plan, do, check, review). Associated with these are several supporting elements that relate specifically to training, which is only one of many methods and activities that help to give effect to policy.

Figure 3 The seven elements of an effective environmental training program

These elements complement each other, with the results of research and technical investigations being promoted through educational initiatives in order to help trainees and their organisations meet environmental performance requirements more easily. This effort is directed towards more sustainable development that avoids and minimises adverse environmental effects and, where possible, enhances pre-existing environmental quality.

Crucial to the success of any program, but especially any program with a training component, are a partnership approach and long-term resourcing and support. These are essential not only for training and the other individual components but for the program as a whole.

Ideally, these elements need to be coordinated within the responsible regulatory agency and/or between related agencies if several are involved – and with the public or private sector concerned. Each one of the seven steps is best carried out in full consultation. Ideally this should occur in the context of a formal or informal partnership – with other relevant agencies and stakeholders, including national, regional and local levels of government, industry or other groups, first peoples and community groups.

The following sections give a very brief overview of each of these elements, using the example of Auckland’s erosion and sediment control program.

	Jot down your thoughts on Action Sheet 2.1 as you go. Remember that the seven steps are not necessarily sequential, despite being numbered. You will probably end up doing many, if not all, of them at the same time, especially if you take on board the partnership approach.
	Remember, too, that these steps will broadly apply to businesses and not-for-profits as well as to government agencies like the one used as the example in this chapter.

Step 1: Partnership: the fundamental platform

Partnership is the platform par excellence for an effective environmental training program, regardless of how strong or weak the regulatory and community focus on the issue in question.

For example, Earl Shaver³¹ recounts the tale of the erosion and sediment control program in the state of Delaware in the USA. It lacked resources and operated in a context of inadequate legislative and regulatory authority, and there was no strong environmental lobby group to represent the community’s growing concerns about flooding and erosion. So Earl and his colleagues at the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control developed a consensus-style approach to getting the necessary legislation and subsequent regulations accepted by the State legislative bodies and by the industry that was going to be regulated. They developed an education campaign highlighting the size of the problem (with slides showing the impacts) and the nature of the regulatory and training solutions. They rolled out the slides in meetings with – and presentations to – contractors’ associations, engineering consultants, utility companies, land developers and the general public. They also made informal presentations to legislative committee members and received only one negative vote in the two-stage process of voting in the new legislation. This approach was so effective that not one member of the sectors affected submitted or testified against the regulation that would affect it. The continued success of Delaware’s program is a tribute to the consensus approach.

Similarly, the Focus Group set up in Auckland to inform the development of the Council’s erosion and sediment control training program was very active and helpful. It later became inactive for some time, but was subsequently revived in the form of the Industry Liaison Group because both the industry and the Council realized they needed a forum for ongoing dialogue.

Meeting three or four times a year, the Industry Liaison Group provides an invaluable communication forum, enabling informal discussion of opportunities for co-operation and of issues of concern. Brief reports on these meetings are sent out to the wider industry in an electronic newsletter.

As an example, in the early days, contractual issues (over which environmental regulators have no control) were debated, especially the need for consultants to properly schedule erosion and sediment controls in their tender documents to ensure that contractors got paid for their environmental protection work. This is an issue that bedevils the start of any new erosion and sediment control program and takes time and industry commitment to overcome.

Bear in mind, as we’ll see later, that your first partners are likely to be internal, and your program will involve ongoing work with both internal and external partners and other stakeholders.

Grant Crossett specialises in designing management systems for invasive pest animals and is a pest and predator control monitoring specialist³². When I met him at a recent international conference on education and training, he told me how he works closely with a wide range of stakeholders when preparing and delivering his programs. He was struck by my presentation because he’d never thought of how he worked as being ‘partnership’ – but it undoubtedly is. It’s just how he naturally goes about his work.

Having a conscious awareness that this is what he is doing can strengthen Grant’s working relationships still more.

Step 2: Research: building a robust case

Good research is the essential foundation of cost-effective environmental management programs. Routine monitoring can signal trends or changes that justify further targeted investigation and intervention; research can then be done into the effectiveness of actual or potential management methods and their effect on the environmental issue of concern.

Research helps you to define the issue, identify the environmental outcomes you want, identify the most cost-effective methods to achieve them, and frame all these in a way that enables their monitoring. It includes initial and ongoing research, and provides data to inform your program monitoring and evaluation.

To make the case for setting up Auckland’s erosion and sediment control program, Council staff had to carry out very robust initial research. They documented the local issue in terms of its existing and projected areal extent and environmental impacts. They then researched erosion and sediment control issues and management options in overseas jurisdictions. This information enabled them to build a case strong enough to justify setting up the program.

Ongoing research projects very specific to big construction sites that the Council has sponsored, funded or undertaken over the years include:

trialling the cost-effectiveness of various erosion and sediment control measures and revegetation measures; for example, comparing straw mulch with hydroseeding and grass cover for erosion control

undertaking a rainfall simulation trial of decant systems for small sediment retention ponds

trialing the effectiveness of chemical flocculation in sediment retention ponds in a twin pond controlled study

investigating cumulative effects of sedimentation on estuarine environments

assessing the ecological value of streams to improve the environmental mitigation, compensation and enhancement that developers should provide

reviewing the current understanding of impacts on environmental, social, economic and cultural values associated with sediment

investigating the relationship between the best practicable option approach to on-site erosion and sediment control and the sensitivity of freshwater and saline receiving environments

reviewing the performance of the current policy framework.

The Council also has an active scientific research program into (among other things) the effects of sediment runoff on freshwater and coastal ecosystems, sediment tracing and a host of other topics. These can be found by searching for ‘technical publications’ on the Council website³³.

Thus, the efficiency of on-site control measures is continually assessed, while ongoing state of the environment monitoring aims to assess their overall effectiveness.

Step 3: Monitoring, evaluation and review

It is amazing – and disturbing – how many programs are set up in such a way that it’s not possible to evaluate them. I’ve scrutinized many a one, and it’s heartbreaking to tell people that the effectiveness of their program can’t be evaluated because of fundamental flaws in their plans and a lack of monitoring data.

By considering outcomes, objectives, monitoring, evaluation and program review UPFRONT in your program planning, you’re more likely to set up your program in the right way.

We did set objectives for our erosion and sediment control program and its training component – though with the benefit of 20:20:20 hindsight (20 points for each eye plus 20 years of experience!) I’d frame them differently now.

We have also conducted evaluations from time to time and I’ll talk about what we did and what we found in Chapter 6. In Chapter 6 I’ll also talk about how to set up your overall program and your training using a program logic approach that will ensure their outcomes and effectiveness can be evaluated.

Step 4: Policy, regulation and enforcement: a management framework

The Council’s erosion and sediment control program was set up within a legislative context that was changed within a very short time with the introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991. In one way, this was fortunate: a body of research had been built up and practical experience had been gained on the ground with regulation of the construction sector, and these informed the development of the new policy instruments provided by the new legislation.

The new act required each regional council to prepare two key policy instruments: a Regional Policy Statement and a Regional Coastal Plan. Regional Policy Statements do not contain enforceable rules: they overview the resource management issues of the region and set out policies and methods to achieve integrated management of the natural and physical resources of the whole region out to the 12-mile coastal limit. Other plans then give effect to these with rules and other methods. Regional Coastal Plans provide a framework to promote the integrated and sustainable management of the coastal environment, which can stretch from the mountain-top out to the 12-mile limit, depending on the issue in question. They can make enforceable rules, but only for areas below mean high water springs.

The research already done to make the policy case for better erosion and sediment control meant that, in Auckland, both these instruments contained strong statements about the effects of accelerated erosion on fresh and coastal waters, noting that many of the adverse effects of land use are expressed in the ultimate marine receiving environments. The same is true of the major lakes and aquifers found in other parts of the world.

The new policy framework enabled the Council to set up robust regulation of erosion and sediment runoff. There are of course many other national, regional, local, Maori and community laws, policies and strategies that also need to be considered.

Ongoing erosion and sediment control-related policy work the Council has carried out over the years includes:

working with the whole development cycle to promote water-sensitive (low impact) urban design and development methods to minimize erosion and sedimentation during the heavy construction phase; runoff of sediment and other pollutants during the small site development phase (e.g. building houses); and the need for ongoing water cycle management to protect stream channels and minimise stormwater contamination

working through integrated watershed and coastal management plans to ensure that on-site erosion and sediment controls are fully integrated with post-development stormwater quantity and quality management within the context of wider watershed and receiving environment considerations

strategic planning input to the various statutory and non-statutory national, regional, and local policies, plans and strategies

joint regional environmental planning with central and local government and other regional stakeholders such as Maori, major transportation players, key industry representatives and so on.

Within this policy framework is a prescriptive framework of regulation and enforcement.

The new Resource Management Act enabled regional councils to prepare regional plans for a given geographic area and/or on a particular resource management issue. Development had become such an issue for the Auckland Region that the Auckland Regional Plan: Sediment Control34, which defines the regulatory controls on land-disturbing activities, was the first regional plan prepared in Auckland.

Again, there are many other pieces of legislation and other regional plans that need to be considered, but the summary below focuses on the Act and the Regional Plan. Together these enabled the Council to exert strong regulatory control on land-disturbing activities.

Under review at the time of writing for inclusion in a Unitary Plan, the Auckland Regional Plan: Sediment Control sets up a regulatory framework that defines:

when an environmental authorisation (a ‘resource consent’ under the Resource Management Act) is needed for any land-disturbing activity, by setting out classes of activity ranging from controlled through to restricted-discretionary, and discretionary to non-complying – each one requiring a higher standard of scrutiny in order to obtain approval

permitted activities for which formal authorization is not needed, provided various environmental performance standards are met; as well as prohibited activities for which an application cannot even be made (though this option was not provided for in the context of erosion and sediment control)

sediment control protection areas, based on environmental risk criteria such as land slope and proximity to water bodies. It also sets up a higher standard of performance if works are done in any area or in relation to any issue raised in other relevant policies or plans.

The Resource Management Act (also currently under review) provides for resource consent application procedures that enable the Council to require applicants to assess the environmental effects of their land-disturbing activities and to prepare erosion and sediment control plans to avoid, minimize, remedy or mitigate them. It also requires monitoring of compliance by regulators and consent holders (developers and their agents).

The Act provides a range of enforcement procedures including (from lesser to major) infringement, abatement and enforcement notices; and prosecutions. In New Zealand, prosecutions are a criminal conviction with potentially heavy fines (including for ongoing offences) and up to two years imprisonment.

Surprise!

The thing that most surprised us about the use of enforcement on major construction sites in Auckland was the relief felt by responsible operators that the ‘fly-by-night’ operators, who undercut prices by skipping or skimping on environmental controls, were finally being called to account.

Many people who work in the construction sector are outdoors types. While they didn’t like the sediment running off their work sites into streams and onto beaches, they thought it was an inevitable consequence of progress and that it wasn’t possible to do anything about it. We got a strong sense of their relief that finally there was something they could do to manage what everyone had thought was an intractable problem.

Even when the responsible operators were penalised for some reason, they took it in good faith. In the next chapter we’ll see where this startling and apparently counter-intuitive development led the industry.

Step 5:Technical guidelines: a performance benchmark

The term ‘training’, as indicated in Chapter 1, implies the existence of a measurable performance standard or benchmark. In a context where environmental performance is required by legally enforceable permits, a detailed specification is essential so that it is very clear what people have to do in order to comply with them.

For erosion and sediment control, such specifications usually focus on structural controls, though many are increasingly referring to non-structural procedures and processes as well. An example of a non-structural control is a pre-construction meeting between the permit holder and his or her agents (the consultants and contractors) and the regulatory body. Sometimes other stakeholders, including community or interest group representatives, may attend and such meetings are now included in the conditions attached to the project’s authorisations.

Structural controls are often called ‘best management practices’, or BMPs (though the term could also refer to non-structural measures, too), and these BMPs are usually set out in a technical guideline.

Such guidelines are not legal documents in themselves, but they effectively become enforceable when attached to the relevant environmental authorizations. While they can and do change over time to reflect new knowledge, they define current best practice against which training and both structural and non-structural measures can be assessed. This is what enables evaluation of the effectiveness of the erosion and sediment control measures on the ground, the BMPs themselves, and also, of course, the training.

The introduction of the new TP90 erosion and sediment control guideline in 1999 (and its updates since then) provided much more technical detail, and was a significant step in helping the development sector comply with the new policies and regulations.

Development of a new guideline from scratch is a big project, even when there are many good examples to follow. Follow best practice: involve the development sector and other stakeholders right from the start. They will help weed out unrealistic assumptions and pick up errors that fade into invisibility, as we become over-familiar with our magnum opus.

Look at the Box below to find out more about what ‘best practice’ means for a technical guideline.

My observations of TP90 and my experience with preparing other guidelines,³⁵ including a new erosion and sediment control guideline for Canterbury in New Zealand’s South Island³⁶, have shown me the significant benefits the partnership process yields in both the technical quality and industry acceptance of the new requirements.

What is ‘best practice’ for developing (or reviewing) a technical guideline?

As environmental experts, we are understandably keen to leap straight into the technical specifications of our guideline, be it for stream bank planting, water pollution control, erosion and sediment control or whatever our topic of concern may be.

But it’s a great idea to step back and think about our pet guideline from a wider perspective. Who’s going to use it? Why would they believe us when we say they should use it and that it will work?

Recently I was asked to think about ‘contemporary international best practice’ erosion and sediment control as part of a review of TP90³⁷. It was easy to find a good relevant definition for this: it was from the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), and said³⁸ ‘scientifically sound techniques [that] are the best practices known today’.

Then I started looking for criteria for a good guideline – what else is important for a guideline, apart from the best practices that we want it to contain? Interestingly, much of the thinking about what constitutes a good guideline seems to be medical, but I believe it applies equally to environmental guidelines.

My 14 criteria for a good guideline that contains environmental best practices are adapted from two medical sources³⁹. They specify that it should be inclusive, evidence-based, relevant, reproducible, robust, transparent, independent, practical, understandable, practicable, cost-effective, accessible, auditable and reviewable.

Here they are in more detail:

1.Inclusive: representative and multidisciplinary input from key stakeholders in a genuinely consultative process is used to develop the guideline – this is the partnership principle at the heart of good environmental management and training

2.Evidence-based: valid research and the best evidence is used to justify the guideline and its contents. Details of the evidence base are available and the cause effect/benefit relationships and assumptions are clearly set out to show how implementing the guideline can be directly linked to avoidance or minimisation of the adverse environmental effects of concern

3.Relevant: the contents of the guideline reflect local and national issues, laws and policies that are relevant to the guideline’s intended users, and changes to laws and policies are accommodated as needed

4.Reproducible: other groups would come to the same conclusions on the basis of the same evidence

5.Robust: draft versions of the guideline are reviewed by scientific and technical peers and lay users

6.Transparent: if users are in doubt, they know where to get more information, including data, assumptions and analysis, and how to contest these if necessary. A good example of this is Part D of Environment Canterbury’s erosion and sediment control guideline, where calculations about the design storm and the size of control measures are clearly set out

7.Independent: areas of debate and conflicts of interest amongst stakeholders and their outcomes are recorded and accessible for reference

8.Practical: a good guideline helps users to solve their real world problems and makes it easy for them to select the right structural and/ or non-structural measure to address them

9.Understandable: the guideline uses clear and unambiguous language, photographs with interpretation of what is being shown, and why, and simple, accurate diagrams that all intended users can readily understand – remembering that some users on the ground may have language, literacy and/or numeracy difficulties

10.Practicable: writers and users of the guideline and other stakeholders all understand the barriers to its use and the resourcing implications of its use for both users and inspectors/auditors

11.Cost-effective: the guideline helps to reduce the inappropriate use of resources

12.Accessible: the intended users of the guideline are consulted about the best ways to present it and access to the guideline is well disseminated by a range of methods

13.Auditable: the technical content of the guideline can be used to develop clear audit criteria for assessing the performance of its users

14.Reviewable: the guideline is regularly reviewed in light of ongoing research and use.

Use Action Sheet 2.2 to explore how well your existing or proposed guideline meets each criterion.

Step 6: Training and capacity-building

The technical erosion and sediment control training that the Auckland Council does is summarized in Chapter 4, and I’ll give more detail about how to set up your training program and develop your training materials in Chapters 5, 6 and 7.

Here, I will briefly allude only to:

t raining as a profession

recognition of training required as part of a professional development

industry capacity and recruitment.

Training as a profession

Get help! Make sure you have expert training input into your early thinking.

Actually running your workshop is just the tip of an iceberg whose elements are only summarised in this book. Before I became a professional trainer, I didn’t really know much about people who specialized in training as a profession. Joining my local Association of Training and Development has been one of the best things I’ve ever done, and it’s part of a world-wide network of such associations.

Expert trainers will help you do much more than just run great workshops. They’ll help you learn how to build a business case to justify your training, do a rigorous analysis of training needs, set up an evaluation system and many other things that make for a great training program.

Recognition of training required as part of professional development

Many public and private sector professionals, including the engineers, planners, surveyors, landscape architects, scientists and others involved in land development, erosion and sediment control and other environmental activities, need to undergo a certain number of hours of training or other learning in order to maintain their professional certification. You can encourage these people to attend your training by making sure it qualifies for points.

There is more on such recognition of training in Chapter 5.

Industry capacity and recruitment

Capacity-building is a huge topic, encompassing personal, intra- and inter-agency capacity, among other things. As such, it’s much wider than the usual narrow focus on skills. It also refers to the numbers of people in the workforce as a whole or in particular sectors, especially those in areas like engineering where there is a global shortage of qualified people.

You will grapple with all these things as you develop your training program and the wider program of which it is part, and will need to involve all your internal and external partners and stakeholders.

I touch on this further in Chapter 8.

Step 7: Program resourcing and support

Later chapters go into program resourcing in more detail, so here I will simply say that developing and sustaining an environmental training program is a big job and you will need help. This means you will have to make a good, strong case to get your budget.

Even if you run only half a dozen workshops a year, the organisational logistics can be daunting. With its steadily expanding suite of environmental workshops, the Auckland Council has had to allocate a staff member to do the work, and it now has a full-time Stormwater Education and Community Programs Advisor. As well as the training program, the annual field days demand considerable commitment from this person, and other staff, for many weeks before the event.

Not all environmental managers have a personal assistant, or even an administrative support person, who could help with this work. Moreover, especially in difficult times, government and other agencies may find it difficult to increase the complement of permanent staff, so you may need to consider other ways of getting help.

Partnering can extend to every element shown in Figure 3 – all the steps we’ve just looked at. Use Action Sheets 2.3 and 2.4 to consider how it could work for you. Remember to consider both internal and external partnerships.

	Red flag
	It’s better not to start at all than to be unrealistically ambitious and start a program that falls over, as this can engender disappointment and cynicism both in your organization and among your stakeholders.
	On the other hand, demonstrating the value of your program to stakeholders will help you capture the resources you need to sustain it.
	Okay, we do learn from our failures, so maybe we can fail – and in so doing hope we’ve encouraged others to join us in resuscitating it!